The Graduate Comics Organization at the University of Florida invites applicants to submit proposals to the 12th UF Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels, "Comics Read but Seldom Seen: Diversity and Representation in Comics and Related Media." The conference will be held from Friday, April 10th, 2015 to Sunday, April 12th, 2015. Proposals are due January 1st, 2015.

Avant-garde composer John Cage started out as a disciple of Arnold Schoenberg. He greatly looked up to the exiled Austrian as a model of how a true artist ought to live. (interesting ways to approach education and life….

Inventing drugs is a tradition that dates back to Homer. From the Odyssey and its lotus-eaters to the psychotropic inventions of the substance-addled Philip K.

Spice Melange: More than just a recreational drug, Spice Melange is the engine of all spiritual and economic reality in Frank Herbert’s Dune novels. Highly addictive, it extends life, heightens vitality and awareness, and can unlock latent prescience and telepathy in certain special individuals. If you’re willing to risk mining it from the monstrous sandworms of planet Arrakis, the Spice will eventually allow you to navigate the vast depths of interstellar hyper-space without a map. Fun perk: Spice Melange will also turn the whites of your eyes an eerie bright blue, a look that suited Kyle MacLachlan, in David Lynch’s infamously bloated film adaptation of the novel, particularly well.

Dreamgum: Introduced in Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld novels, Dreamgum is a hallucinogen delivered nightly to human beings by mysterious beings called “Ethicals.” Administered in the form of a stick of chewing gum, its effects range from sexual compulsion to euphoria, as well as the vivid hallucination of suppressed memories. Unsurprisingly, it’s habit-forming.

"Consider it this way: science fiction is like chaos theory. It alters small, key variables about the world, just to see which butterflies cause thunderstorms 10, 50, or 100 years into the future. When we read even the basest genre fiction, we acknowledge that the continuum of reality can persist, in a more-or-less recognizable manner, even when an author has deliberately removed (or added) something vital. Science fiction asks us to imagine all manner of things: flying cars, interstellar travel, cosmic war, and advanced weaponry. We find ourselves in a radically altered landscape–the unchecked globalized sprawl of William Gibson, say, or the shiny planetary colonies of Robert Heinlein–and immediately set about, as in a children’s game, spotting the differences."

Comic book layouts are pretty popular. And they work well for elearning courses. For one, they look different. It’s that type of contrast that can hook your learners who might be bored with the standard-looking corporate elearning. On top of that a comic-like layout breaks the content into panels which allows you to control the [...]

Brooke Sheridan's insight:

Some useful ideas here, though the examples they're offering don't seem to be fully exploiting the medium.

Toon Graphics, aimed at children in the fourth grade and up, is a new imprint of Raw Junior, an independent publishing house created in 1998 by Françoise Mouly who said she was a huge believer in the power of comics to create better readers. “Theseus and the Minotaur” came out on Tuesday.

Ms. Mouly started Toon Books, which publishes comics for children as young as 3, in 2008. Its books are listed on several prominent recommended reading lists (including the American Library Association’s) and are included in state and national school programs and initiatives, which is where the teachers who take them into the classrooms often hear about them in the first place. The books are taught across the country, with the help of 200-page illustrated lesson plans that cover topics from literary interpretation and story arcs to “comics as a genre.” Their use in classrooms made immediate sense, given their similarities to the picture books that children that age were already reading in school.

With Toon Graphics, Ms. Mouly said she hoped to extend this learning process to older children. Though the books also have accompanying lesson plans and follow national Common Core standards, the battle for acceptance, Ms. Mouly admits, may be uphill. Plenty of fourth and fifth graders love comics, of course, but that’s also the time when many teachers and parents are trying to wean children off them.

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